1. Technical Field
This invention is directed generally to wireless communication, and more specifically, for using a block acknowledgement to acknowledge data receipt in a polling based access method.
2. Background Art
A scheduled service interval (SI), which is the time interval used by the access point (AP) to periodically poll each non-AP STA (station), can be divided to three periods: an exhaustive polling phase, a selective polling phase and a CSMA phase.
In the exhaustive polling phase, the AP polls all of the STAs that require Quality of Service (QoS) transmissions by sending out a polling packet. Each STA transmits its data after it receives the polling packet.
In the selective polling phase, the AP checks if it failed to receive data from any STAs during the exhaustive polling phase, and then selectively polls the failed STAs. The AP continues to poll the failed STAs until the AP successfully receives data from all of the failed STAs.
The Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA) phase is for communications of legacy devices based on the CSMA mechanism. Stations other than the QSTAs communicate in this period. Also, all STAs may communicate some configuration packets with the AP in this period.